The Scientist
by mildlyattractivegroove
Summary: "The truth is, she can't remember a time in her life when she didn't feel 'that way.' There was just the time before she knew what it meant, and the time after. Most days, she misses the time before." Santana navigates life after being outed, and (after some experimentation) finds a home in a place she never expected.
1. oh, take me back to the start

More often than she'd like to admit, she lies awake at night thinking about her last conversation with her grandmother, that last phone call before she'd gotten into her car and driven off to Kentucky in August.

"I just don't understand, Santana," her abuela had said to her, that once familiar voice now filled with a foreign disdain. "How did this happen? When did you start to feel that you were..._that way_?"

The truth is, she can't remember a time in her life when she didn't feel _that way_. There was just the time before she knew what it meant, and the time after.

Most days, she misses the time before. Those carefree middle school days when she collected smiles from Brittany Pierce like sparkling pieces of sea glass, with no concern for her motives for doing so. Brittany just seemed like someone who needed a little looking after, and looking after Brittany made Santana feel taller and tougher than she suspected she had a right to, more proud of herself than any ribbon or trophy had ever made her feel.

She knew their friendship was different, but she wasn't particularly interested in knowing the name of what that difference was, in speaking it aloud.

And in the early days, Brittany had never pushed for a thing. Santana was the one who had made all the preliminary moves, the ones that must have seemed so small from the outside, but felt to her like tectonic shifts: the brush of a hand, the resting of a head on a shoulder. Even though it required a complete reordering of the way she'd always envisioned her life, every move, once made, just felt so natural that she couldn't imagine not having made it.

Until one day, without thinking, she'd just kissed Brittany, completely casually, before moving toward the door to her bedroom to head downstairs for dinner.

She'd made it four or five steps away before feeling Brittany's hand on her arm, pulling her back into the room. Brittany had kissed her soundly then, holding her face so gently in her hands that Santana thought she might actually cry, and when Brittany had finally pulled away, she'd looked Santana right in the eyes and said, "There you are. I knew you'd get here eventually."

The two of them had collapsed into giggles at that until finally Santana's mother had had to come upstairs to see what was taking them so long.

After that night, everything suddenly seemed so much easier. Or, if not easy, at least everything seemed to make sense. Even if she wasn't ready to talk about it, even if there were times when she still used her body to get what she wanted (mostly to protect herself from the things she wasn't ready to say out loud), kissing Brittany made her feel like there was finally a place for her in the world, a place she actually wanted to be.


	2. it's such a shame for us to part

Things didn't stay that simple, though. They couldn't. Even she knew that. Even back then.

Brittany couldn't stay patient, for one thing. And why should she? Santana had been the one who'd kept telling her that it didn't mean anything, or at least, that it didn't mean everything. Even if everything in her actions spoke otherwise, her words kept saying, "This is not real. This is not serious." And so eventually, Brittany moved on.

Santana tried not to let on the way it cut her to the quick, the way that seeing Brittany truly happy and out in the open with someone else made her feel like she was being cleaved flesh from bone. Being hurt meant that it mattered, and it wasn't supposed to, or at least that's what everything around her told her. According to the world she lived in, whatever she'd had with Brittany, whatever she might have with another girl sometime in the future, didn't count, except to count against her. And so she did her grieving in secret, buried it deep in her chest, and then—just to throw people off the trail—started a rumor that she got a boob job over the summer.

It gave people something to talk about, and even though her bra size hadn't changed in the slightest, no one doubted it for a second. It's amazing what people will believe about you when they really want to.

For a while, she even entertained the idea that being without Brittany would make it go away, that difference she felt between herself and everyone else around her. But of course that wasn't true. It was just as much a part of her as it had always been, but at least without Brittany there was less of a chance of being caught.

She actually was never all that worried about how her parents would react if they found out. They'd always been fairly liberal and open with her about those sorts of things, and her mother had fairly strongly hinted that she'd be there if Santana ever wanted to talk to her about her "friendship" with Brittany.

It was everything else that was the problem. Not just the stupid kids at McKinley, or even the rest of her family. It was that the whole ridiculously-named process of "coming out" just seemed so invasive, so tedious. She didn't want to be the subject of pointed looks and hushed whispers. She didn't want to answer any questions or have any heartfelt conversations. And she certainly didn't want to be anyone's poster child, for good or bad.

So she had chosen to keep quiet for the time being, until graduation at least. To get through each day and carry the secret forward to the next, until the time and place felt right to deal with it. It wasn't a perfect plan, but it seemed workable enough, until Finn Hudson had come along and ruined everything.

Maybe she should have been more careful, since she was obviously the one with more to lose. But Finn was a jerk, a malignant parasite that had sucked the life out of Quinn, then Rachel, then the Glee club as a whole. And she was just so tired of people treating him like he was untouchable. So she'd shot off her mouth for a while; then he'd fired back. And when the smoke had cleared—well.

She knows there are still people who think she deserved it; sometimes she almost agrees with them. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. It happened; she survived it. And that fall she left Lima and that life behind for what she hoped was forever.


End file.
